Wiki
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Release Date
14 November 2007
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Length
27 tracks
Alive 2007 is a live album by Daft Punk, first released on November 19, 2007. It is the second album recorded live by the duo, following Alive 1997. Alive 2007 features their performance at Bercy in Paris from June 14, 2007.
The physical release in North America was delayed to December 4 due to production issues, but the album became available as a digital download on November 20, 2007. A special edition of the album was released that includes the encore from the Alive 2007 tour on a second disc. It also includes a 50-page book containing photographs from the tour taken by DJ Falcon. The first single from the album, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Alive 2007)" was released digitally on October 15, 2007.
The album won the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album in 2008.
Structure
The Alive 2007 set used Ableton Live software on "custom made super-computers" for the show. Daft Punk accessed the hardware remotely with Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controllers and JazzMutant Lemur touchscreen pads within the central pyramid. Minimoog Voyager RME units were also implemented for the live performances. The four Voyager units and two Behringer mixers allowed Daft Punk to "mix, shuffle, trigger loops, filter, distort samples, EQ in and out, transpose or destroy and deconstruct synth lines." The majority of the equipment was stored away during the live sets within offstage towers.
The recording of Alive 2007 was derived from Daft Punk's live performance at their Bercy show on June 14, 2007. Reviews of the set noted how Daft Punk manipulated and reworked their established material. One report spotted vocal elements from the song "Too Long" mixed with newly-generated accompaniment. The overlapped mixtures of "Television Rules the Nation" with "Crescendolls", "Around the World" with "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and "Superheroes" with "Human After All" were reported to be well received by the audience. The set itself was considered a collection of Daft Punk's most popular recordings. The performances heavily featured tracks from Daft Punk's album Human After All, prompting critics to reconsider what they felt about the album.
The visuals of the 2006 and Alive 2007 tour were set up by XL Video. The company provided eight-core Mac Pro units running Catalyst v4 and Final Cut Pro. Daft Punk approached the company with their visual concept for the shows. "They came to us with a pretty fixed idea of what they wanted," said head of XL Video, Richard Burford. "They wanted to mix live video with effects. Using the eight-core Mac Pros, we were able to take in eight digital sources and treat them as video streams. Then they could use Catalyst to coordinate the video with lighting effects and add their own effects in on the fly. The final digital video streams ran to LED screens."
The performances for the Alive 2007 tour were an expansion of Daft Punk's 2006 live sets. Noted additions include elements of the tracks "Burnin'" and "Phoenix" as well as an encore. Bangalter explained that the 2006 sets were initially designed for performances within larger festivals, but later refined to accommodate Daft Punk-specific shows. "The goal was to try and bring a complete global experience to the audience." The introduction for the live show featured the five-note sequence used in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The album includes elements of the Busta Rhymes song "Touch It", the original version of which was produced by Swizz Beatz featuring a sample of "Technologic". Also featured are elements of Gabrielle's "Forget About the World", the original version of which was remixed by Daft Punk for her single. The encore of the Alive 2007 set features Bangalter's side projects: Stardust's "Music Sounds Better with You" and Together's self-titled track "Together".
Reception
Alive 2007 was met with positive reviews upon release. Pitchfork Media regarded the recording as "the Ultimate Daft Punk Mixtape", specifically noting how songs from the album Human After All had been "constantly improved and born anew" for the live set. The sentiment was also shared by Allmusic, stating that "It has the feel of a greatest-hits-live concert, but energized by Daft Punk's talents at weaving songs in and out of each other." The publication ultimately considered Alive 1997 the stronger of their two live albums, however. A review by The Star noted that the release and Daft Punk's concurrent tours cumulatively restored the duo's reputation following the mixed reception of their two earlier studio albums.
Sputnikmusic stated that the Alive 2007 performance was closer to a theatrical production than a traditional concert, and that the album "could just as easily be a studio concoction". Entertainment Weekly however felt that the live crowd enhanced the positive mood of the performance. Rolling Stone stated that Alive 2007 "loses some of the essential experience" of attending the live Daft Punk events. The Phoenix also felt that the album package would have benefited from more video content, expressing that a key factor of the live show was its implementation of visual elements. In his first positive review for a Daft Punk album, Robert Christgau believed that a full video representation was avoided because "too much scale, flesh and bodily effluvia would be lost." Thomas Bangalter expressed his reasons of not releasing a DVD by stating "the thousands of clips on the internet are better to us than any DVD that could have been released."
On December 3, 2008, Alive 2007 and its single "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" received Grammy Award nominations for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording, respectively. Both the album and the single were announced as winners during the 51st Grammy Awards pre-telecast ceremony.
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